Directed by Alfonso Cuaron ("Children of Men"), the outer-space thriller stars Sandra Bullock and George Clooney as shuttle workers whose mission becomes a 300-mile-high fight for survival when their craft is destroyed by high-speed debris.

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ASSOCIATED PRESSSandra Bullock stars in “Gravity”?as a medical engineer who must survive in space after her space craft is destroyed.

And that's just the start of a plot so gripping, so brilliant and breathless - and yet so simple and straightforward - that you wonder why nobody thought of it before.

Bullock has a lot of screen time to herself - she and Clooney are essentially the only actors, though Ed Harris does some instantly recognizable voice work from Houston.

As the film floats through jaw-dropping weightless scenes - often several minutes long - Bullock ably conveys clamped-down nausea (her character is new to space), then blazing panic, terror, grief, despair and eventually hope.

I can't imagine how she achieved all that while strapped in to the massive and complex machinery Cuaron and crew designed to simulate zero-G.

Besides Bullock and Clooney - who is also excellent - the film's chief assets are ferocious suspense and dazzling visuals.

With something going awry every few minutes - all of it life-threatening, yet also tied to the same debris mishap - "Gravity" is the space-mayhem film that "Armageddon" only wanted to be. I literally cannot recall the last time I squirmed and groaned so constantly and fearfully in my seat.

Particularly agonizing are scenes in which astronauts in free-fall must catch hold of something or be flung headlong into space - which actually happens more than once.

The grueling tension is greatly aided by seamless special effects: space stations, explosions, floating shrapnel, plus one unforgettable shot of an astronaut killed by debris that went clean through his helmet - and his head.

There are a few notable holes in the plot; but when a film is sufficiently well written, edited, photographed and performed - as "Gravity" is - these things fade to insignificance. Purists might be best to think of this as grand, old-fashioned adventure in the fast-and-loose vein of "North by Northwest" or "Flight of the Phoenix."

And though it is indeed a crackerjack thriller, it also radiates transcendent hope, with the title force - or lack thereof - serving as an effective symbol for Bullock's character, who is drifting untethered in the wake of her daughter's death.

Late in the film, when she begins addressing this long-lost loved one, I was thinking, "They gave this actress an Oscar for the wrong movie."